When you write a paper/report/blog/whatever...
 

One space or two spaces after a period?

I was taught 2. I still add 2. Some apps will change it or use smart/variable width spaces.

My phone's virtual keyboard adds a period if I hit the space bar twice.

One space if it is going into a printed publication, the typesetter will adjust the end of sentence spacing. Two spaces if it is a report or something that will not be typeset. My habit is one space because for so many years nearly everything I wrote went to typesetting.

Which is easier to read, one space (above) or two spaces (below)?

One space if it is going into a printed publication, the typesetter will adjust the end of sentence spacing. Two spaces if it is a report or something that will not be typeset. My habit is one space because for so many years nearly everything I wrote went to typesetting.

I now use . instead of spaces... :)

I'm pretty sure this BB software will take multiple spaces and reduce them down to one so your above and below, are the same.

Yep. I can see the difference in "edit" mode, but when it is posted the spaces are the same.

Two spaces is a hill worth dying on.

Of course the monospace typewriter was the reason for two spaces. If your sentence ended with a skinny letter like I or J the next sentence was too close to be easily readable.

When proportional spacing from typesetters and computers took over, the second space is just not needed, and makes for a river of white in bodies of text.

I normally would agree, but the wife is threatening to kill me in my sleep if I keep using 2 spaces.

Mrs Uzu should relax a little.

That seems like a really weird thing to get worked up over.

Two after a period, but only one after a question mark.

I researched this a bit ago, the norm is 1 space these days. I use 1 for here on Pelican but use 2 in emails.

If it is a typed page that is not going to be typeset use two spaces. It is easier to read.

Single spaces in typeset text aren't all the same width, they are adjusted for readability. A sentence that ends in a "t" with the horizontal bar hanging over the period will be given a larger space after the period by the typesetter. A sentence that ends with the letter "n" will be given a narrower space.

Just remember:
typeWRITING spacing is absolute and controlled by the space bar.
typeSETTING spacing is variable and controlled by the software.

neither is wrong
they have been teaching my kids one space, I guess, due to proportional fonts.
I still do two spaces, I stared on a manual typewriter with fixed spacing

It's the biggest giveaway in an email/document how old the sender is so if you care about that go single. If you don't care you probably aren't this far down in the thread

Interesting. If I was ever taught that, it didn't stick.
I just let my brain do it's thing which is to hit the space bar twice. Even if I know it's not going to take, my finger does it anyway.

Another question, how many spaces after a colon that precedes a long list. For instance, this is a name of a bunch of sports cars: 911, diablo, testarossa, miata, elise, Lotus 7, 356, 550, spitfire, e-type, corvette.

TheworstthingIcoulddoisletmybraindoitsthing. It needs constant adult supervision.

That's very interesting to me...I never knew that but it makes perfect sense...I just always thought the two spaces was a punctuation rule. I definitely notice when that river of white is more pronounced than usual in a book.

I wonder if there are creative, funny or dastardly people out there making use of that phenomenon?

You learn something new every day.

But I’ll stick with my one space.

I keep writing reports on my telescope upgrades, and she keep proofreading them. She has to do lots of paperwork with paragraphs, and is dealing with lots of "modern" people, and changed her ways. I make lots of reports at my real job which consist of single sentences on Powerpoint slides, so I never learned. Now, I'm writing these repair reports and need to "modernize". Even here I'm double spacing my sentences, but we now know that the forum software is more..."modern" than I am.

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